Recent Deliciousness

I have been so inspired in the kitchen since my return from Esalen.  The food they serve there is excellent, healthy, varied and with the new skills from the course I was taking there I have been creating some healthy yet decadent selections.  I have been sticking to my no-nightshade diet but have become a bit more indulgent with high quality cheese and bread.

Mushroom crostini with manchego cheese

Carmelized onion and mushroom on polenta with spinach, sunflower sprouts in my salad!

Chard from my mom's garden and olives from Charlie's Farm

Nicoise salad with quail egg.  Mushroom crostini and cooked carrots

Sure, there's a lot of repetition here, but it's repetition of yumminess.  Is started with a loaf of sourdough we bought at the Big Sur Bakery, it was begging to be made into crostini.  And after slicing a big box of mushrooms for an hour at the Esalen Kitchen, that has become a theme through my food lately!

Bringing home my two sourdough "mothers"

At Esalen I learned to make sourdough bread, something I had been thinking of for a few years now.  Like my kombucha, the sourdough "mothers" are living cultures of wild yeast.  They must be cared for by feeding them a diet of flour and water and making them useful by separating out portions often to bake into lovely bread.  I think I've baked about 6 loafs since I've returned!  One starter is for rye bread and one is for white bread, although the possibilities expand from there.

Here's my first ever loaf of sourdough!

It sliced up lovely!

The first loaf of Rye, crusty!

His and Hers Morning Toast

Rye Bread topped with my own fresh goat cheese, honey from Charlie's Farm and Bee Pollen.

Beautiful Breakfast with my love!

I've begun to get these beautiful eggs from my chicken, Madame Chocolate.

Here are two beauties that I served at a dinner party with sausage and gourmet mustard.

Maria soup goes great with Sourdough!

Transforming milk into cheese, it's magic!

The other major lesson from my course that I wanted to get busy with right away was the making of cheese.  I found a local cheese production supplier called Curds and Wine and invested in some molds, some cultures and some cheesecloth.  I started with the easiest and quickest cheese, chèvre, or goat cheese.  I started with one gallon of goats milk from Trader Joe's and heated it to 86 degrees and then added two types of cultures as well as rennet.  Then I let the milk sit about 18 hours until the curds formed a mass and separated form the whey.  Then I cut the curds and scooped the chunks out into my molds.  I let it sit a day, salted it and flipped it over and back onto the molds for another day.  Then I placed them in the refrigerator for two day to get a bit more dry.  I rolled one finished cheese in herbs, I submerged one piece in honey for three days, and I left the hearts plain.

The Curd has formed one big mass with the Whey separating

We cut the curd the extract more liquid, or Whey

Honey chèvre 

Honey chèvre 

Apple Pie is the way to my man's heart!